Letters to the editor, Sept. 21

Well, again, another mass killing of innocent people at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Folks, this is really very simple. Either we:

Buy the National Rifle Association’s belief that the way to stop these mass killings is to put more weapons in our society and arm all of us with, I guess, assault weapons. If I am going to take on an assault weapon, I want to have equal firepower.

Get about having fewer guns in our society, out of the hands of those who aren’t able to responsibly handle them, and under lock and key, including ammunition, if you do have one. Let’s not make this more complicated than it is.

I will point out that these latest killings were in a Navy facility. There were all kinds of military folks running around with weapons. Yet, as of when this was written a dozen people were dead.

Gerald Goen

Tarpon Springs

Unions matter

A recent letter demeaning unions calls for a response.

The claim that unions have no place in the workplace flies in the face of the fact that workers have never had less of a voice in the workplace, while income inequality has reached a frightening percentage not seen since the days of the robber barons. CEO pay has increased exponentially and stockholders are getting rich, while real wages have been stagnant for more decades and benefits have declined sharply.

This state of affairs is the direct result of more than 50 years of anti-union, anti-worker Republican lawmaking and conservative Supreme Court decisions that have dramatically reduced union membership.

While today’s Democratic Party may not be the one of the letter writer’s father, neither is the Republican Party, which has become an arm of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Chamber of Commerce, and numerous conservative “think tanks” funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers. As for the inference that union members are prone to misbehaving, the rate of misconduct is actually higher in nonunion workplaces, in part because nonunion employees tend to have less regard to their low-paying, no-benefits jobs.